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31 May 2025

Finn O’Keefe closed his eyes. He was no coward. And the absence of other human beings certainly didn’t scare him. He had discovered years ago how calm and agreeable his own company could be, and had experienced many wonderful moments of solitude with nothing above him but the sky and the cries of seagulls riding the salty west winds, scanning the sea for tell-tale signs of glistening backs. The only time he ever experienced loneliness, solitude’s desperate sister, was in crowded places. For this reason, the Moon was completely to his taste, despite having so far failed to have any spiritual effect on him. It was easy to be alone here: all you had to do was go behind a hill, switch yourself off from the radio-wave chatter and pretend the others didn’t even exist.

Now, on the flight to the Peary Base, his self-deception was revealed. It was laughable to think that you could turn your back on the world in the certainty that it was still there, to assume that you could opt back into its incredibly noisy civilisation at any moment. Even in the expanse of the Mojave Desert, in the mountain range of the Himalayas, or in the perpetual ice, you would still be sharing the planet with thinking beings, a thought which gave solitude a comfortable foundation.

But the Moon was
lonely
.

Banished from Gaia’s protective body, cut off from all communication and from the whole of humanity, it had become clear to him during the two hours they had been en route that Luna placed no value on
Homo sapiens
. Never before had he felt so ignored and devoid of importance. The hotel, gone to ruin. Peary Base, no longer a certainty. The plateaux and mountain ranges all around them suddenly seemed hostile – no, not even that, because hostility would mean they were acknowledged here. But in the context of what religious people defined as Creation, the human race clearly had less significance than a microbe under a skirting board. If one took Luna to be exemplary of the trillions of galaxies in the visible cosmos, it became clear that all of this had
not
been made for humans – if it had been
made
at all.

He suddenly found comfort in the group and was thankful for every word that was spoken. And even though he hadn’t known Miranda Winter that well, her death felt like a personal tragedy, because just a few centimetres would have been enough to prevent it. She might have driven her beloved Louis around the bend, named her breasts, and believed any old nonsense that dried-up old Hollywood divas like Olinda
Brannigan deduced from tarot cards and tea leaves; but the way she saw herself, her resolutely cheerful determination not to let anything or anyone destroy her good mood, the sublime in the ridiculous, he had admired all of that about her, and possibly even loved it a little too. He wondered whether he had ever been as honest in his arrogance as Miranda Winter had been in her simplicity.

His gaze wandered over to Lynn Orley.

What had happened to
her
?

The living dead. It was as though she had been erased. Nina had mentioned some kind of shock to Deputy Commander Wachowski, but she seemed to be working her way through self-destruction programme; she hadn’t spoken a single word since Miranda’s death. There was hardly anything to indicate that she was even aware of her surroundings. Everything—

* * *

—had vanished into the event horizon; nothing could make its way out.

She had become a black hole.

And yet, sitting in the depths of the black hole, she found herself capable of following the echoes of her thoughts. This was unusual for a Hawking-like black hole. Something wasn’t right. If she really had fallen into her collapsed core and ended up as a singularity, this would also have meant the end of all cognition. Instead, she had made her way to
somewhere
. There was certainly no other way to explain the fact that she was still thinking and making speculations, although she had to admit she would probably be doing better if certain green tablets hadn’t been burned when—

* * *

—with the destruction of the hotel, any hope of a message from Hanna had been erased. If he was still able to send out messages, that was.

By now, with the chaotic evening on her mind, Dana was having doubts about this. Was a little pessimism advisable? After all, anything could have happened on Aristarchus. Maybe – although of course without writing Hanna off right away – she should confront the possibility of taking things into her own hands. Her cover hadn’t been blown yet, and her avowed opponent didn’t seem aware of anything, not even herself. All the others trusted her. Even Tim, who—

* * *

—was in increasing despair about how to fairly distribute his worries. Worries for Amber, for Julian (more than he would like to admit), for Lynn and all the rest in the shuttle, and the others wherever they were at that moment; worries as to the limit of his own capacity for suffering, one endless round of anxiety. After flying for more than two hours they had to be nearing the base by now, but they still hadn’t been able to establish contact. Dana had put it down to the tiresome satellite problem,
and said they would have a connection as soon as they came into the transmission area. Tim’s worry-list expanded to include the horror of a deserted and somehow destroyed base. The time crept by, or was it racing? The Moon offered no reference points for human perceptions of the passing of time; his species’ timekeeping had absurd continuance only within the enclave of the Callisto, while all around them there was no time, and they would never arrive anywhere ever again.

And as the horror of the vision, fed by his torturously brooding imagination, threatened to overpower him—

* * *

—four words and a yawn provided the solution.

‘Tommy Wachowski. Peary Base.’

‘Peary Base, this is Callisto. We’re coming in for landing. Request permission to land in around ten minutes.’

‘A social visit?’ Wachowski asked sleepily. ‘Heavens. Do you know how late it is? I just hope we’ve cleaned up and cleared away the bottles.’

‘This is no time for jokes,’ said Nina.

‘Just a moment.’ Wachowski’s tone changed in a flash. ‘Landing field 7. Do you need assistance?’

‘We’re okay. One injured, not life-threatening, and one person in shock.’

‘Why aren’t you flying to Gaia?’

‘We’ve come from there. There was a fire. Gaia has been destroyed, but there are other reasons why we can’t go back to Vallis Alpina.’

‘God! What’s happened?’

‘Tommy.’ Dana tuned in. ‘We’ll tell you the details later, okay? We have a lot to report and a great deal more to process. But right now we’re just happy to be able to land.’

Wachowski fell silent for a moment.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’ll get everything ready here. See you soon.’

The dust cleared after just a quarter of an hour, restoring the views over to the distant Mare Imbrium, to the mountain range of Montes Jura – and to the mining station.

Hanna allowed himself a moment of rest, stretching out and tilting his head back. Despite veering too far north-west, he had nearly made it. As long as he kept
up the pace he would be there very soon. His hunch that the others were either dead or severely limited in their transport capabilities had turned into a certainty. They could have caught him up in no time with a rover, but no one had appeared.

His head felt as though it were stuffed with cotton wool, and he was struggling against light dizziness and nausea. He started to walk again. Within a quarter of an hour, he reached the station. Unlike Peary Base, its design was entirely celestial: a large, regolith-covered igloo, connected to cylindrical, pressurised insectoids, a U-formation of spherical tank depots and hangars framing a landing field, bordered by the railhead with its main and siding tracks. Steps and elevators led up to the tracks, freight trains – basic flatbed wagons coupled together – dozed ahead of their next journey. To the side of the landing field, two dozen spiders, frozen and motionless, waited for the command to deployment. Two more had taken up position right next to the rail track and were loading one of the trains with spherical tanks, while a third, fully laden, was on the approach. The plant seemed to be undergoing some development, and Hanna noticed that the hangars, depots and the igloo-shaped habitat were resting on caterpillar tracks. As soon as the zone had been fully processed, the entire station would move on. The visibility was much better here, even though a thin veil of dust hung over everything. Harsh, bright sunlight was reflected back by the crystalline facets of the suspended particles, creating an oppressive, post-nuclear-disaster mood. A world of machines.

Hanna searched through the hangars and, alongside various maintenance robots, managed to find four robust grasshoppers with larger cargo holds and higher stilts than the ones used in Gaia. There was no trace of anything quicker, like a shuttle. There were no conventionally driven vehicles here at all; in the mining zone everything was on legs, thereby reducing the amount of dust stirred up and providing better protection for the mechanical components. The beetles’ maintenance interfaces were located in the head and the hunchback, which made the design of the grasshoppers logical. They could get above the blanket of dust and, from there, execute precision landings on the vast bodies; the robots took care of the rest. Hanna had no doubt that one of the hoppers would get him to his destination – they hardly used any fuel – but they were terribly slow. He would be en route for almost two days with one of those things, the cargo hold filled up with oxygen reserves – always supposing he found something of the kind in the station. His suit would provide him with drinking water, but he wouldn’t be able to have a bite to eat. He was prepared to put up with that, but not with the time delay.

He
had
to act within the next two hours.

He paced through the airlock of the habitat and went into a disinfection room, where cleaning fluids were sprayed on him at high pressure to cleanse his suit of
moon dust. Then he was finally able to take his helmet off and search the quarters. It was spacious and comfortable enough that you could tolerate several days here, with sanitary facilities, a kitchen, a generous amount of food supplies, working and sleeping quarters, a communal room, even a small fitness centre. Hanna paid a visit to the toilet, ate two wholegrain bars covered in chocolate, drank as much water as he could manage, washed his face and looked for headache tablets. The station pharmacy was excellently equipped. After that, he inspected one of the insectoid transporters connected to the station, but that too proved to be unsuitable for his needs, because it was even slower than the hoppers. He at least managed to find additional oxygen which would assure his survival out there for some days. But on the question of how to finish the job in the near future, he was still at a loss.

He put his helmet back on and hauled all the oxygen reserves he could find out to the landing field.

His gaze wandered over to the spiders. The last one in the row was just heaving its tanks onto the freight train, which was loaded almost to capacity, then securing them in place with the rib-like clamps that extended from the sides. From the looks of things, the train would soon be setting off towards the moon base.

At 700 kilometres an hour!

His thoughts came tumbling thick and fast. There were still around a dozen tanks to be loaded. He had maybe ten minutes. Too little to destroy the hoppers as he had planned, but he could still take the oxygen reserves with him. Running now, he brought them to the elevator and threw them in. The barred cabin set off at an annoyingly slow pace. He could see the spider’s legs through the crossbars, its body, the industrious pincers. Three tanks to go. He rushed out onto the railway platform and squeezed the reserves between the piled-up globes on a freight wagon. The penultimate tank was passed over by the praying-mantis-like extremities and stowed away. Where would be the best place to sit? Nonsense, there was no ideal location; this wasn’t the Lunar Express, it was a cargo train. Certainly one whose acceleration a human could survive without harm. Beyond that, it didn’t matter how quickly the train went. In the moon vacuum it was no different to being in free fall, where you could leave the vessel at 40,000 kilometres an hour and take a casual look around.

The last tank was just being secured.

In front of the tanks! That was the best place.

He pulled himself up onto the wagon bed, then went hand over hand along the metal globes and under the spider’s pincers to the front, until he found a place which seemed good to him, an empty passage between two traction elements. He squeezed himself in, crouched down, wedged in his feet and leaned his back against the tanks.

And waited.

Minutes passed by, and he started to have doubts. Had he been wrong? The fact that the train was fully loaded didn’t necessarily mean it was setting off now. But while he was still brooding over it, there was a slight jolt. Turning his head, he saw the spider disappear from his field of vision. Then the pressure of acceleration followed as the train got faster and faster. The plain flew past him, the dust-saturation around him gradually gave way. For the first time since his cover had been blown, Hanna didn’t feel trapped in a nightmare of someone else’s making.

* * *

‘Lousy grasshoppers!’ cursed Julian.

They had made it to the mining station with the very last of their strength. Oleg Rogachev, trained to stay standing for so long that his opponent would fall over from exhaustion, was the only one to show no signs of fatigue. He had rediscovered his gentle, controlled way of speaking and was emitting the freshness of an air-conditioned room. Amber, however, could have sworn that her spacesuit had developed a life of its own, maliciously intent on obstructing her movements and exposing her to the unfamiliar experience of claustrophobia. Soaking wet, she slumped in her gear, bathed in bad odours. Evelyn was faring similarly, traumatised from almost being trampled to death and still a little unsure on her feet. Even Julian seemed to be discovering, with surprise, that he really was sixty years old. Never before had they heard Peter Pan snort so loudly.